Learning to Swim
Authors: Annie Cosby
Learning to Swim
A
Hearts Out of Water
Novel
Annie Cosby
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products such as: Pepto Bismol, Range Rover, Barbie, Wikipedia, Laffy Taffy, Grey Goose, Big Bird and Swiffer.
Copyright © 2013 Annie Cosby.
LEARNING TO SWIM by Annie Cosby
Write for You Publishing
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America.
No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For Princess,
Who spent the entirety of this novel by my side
Contents
An Pálás Bándearg
The Pink Palace
“Oh my,” Dad said.
“This has to be a joke,” I announced.
“It’s perfect!” Mom clapped her hands happily.
We had just pulled up in front of that legendary house, the one we’d call ours this summer—and every summer thereafter if my mother had anything to do with it.
It was unmistakable, perched between two modestly whitewashed houses like a giant bottle of Pepto Bismol. An enormous block of solidified cotton candy. Now that my mother and her bleach-blonde hair had arrived, the place was only one plastic Ken doll short of a Barbie dreamhouse.
It even had a sign next to the front door with big, curly white letters against a purple background. The Pink Palace.
No shit.
I would have been cackling had the shock of my having to
sleep
here for the next three months not been too crippling.
Mom was already bouncing along toward the front door, babbling incessantly. I jogged to catch up as Dad went to begin unloading the trunk. Princess was already settling in, sniffing the bushes around the pink front steps.
We’d bought the house as-is. That meant that it was not fit to be lived in. So my father snapped it up “at a steal” and set his contractor friends to work on it. And then, when it was nearly finished, my mother set her decorators on it to make sure it would again not be fit to live in. At least not for anyone with a sensitive stomach.
“Cora! Your room’s up here!”
I followed her voice up to the third floor, afraid of what I’d encounter. Surely a life-size Barbie or a shrine to kittens. Neither would have been out of place. Mom’s team had wholeheartedly seized the house’s century-old name.
“It’s a girl,” I said lamely, entering what would apparently be “my room.”
It was big, with a king-size bed in the middle and a full-length mirror and a dresser on either side. But it was pink. There was a cool trunk at the foot of the bed that was the natural brown of wood, but everything else in the room, from the curtains to the mismatched lamps that sat around the room on various pieces of furniture, would rival the pink of any baby’s butt.
“Isn’t it delightful?” Mom screeched.
It had a big balcony that looked out onto the beach, which was promising, but I couldn’t take her happiness right now. Nothing would make her think badly of this house and this summer she had been so long in preparing. Not even my loudest whining or most stinging sarcasm. As if I wanted to be
here
, hundreds of miles from home, during my last summer before my high school friends disappeared from my life.
“It’s lovely, Mom.” I tried to keep my voice monotone. “It’s all just
too
lovely.” I turned around and tramped back down the pink-carpeted stairs.
“Where are you going?” Mom demanded, skipping down the stairs after me.
The front door lay open and I could see the Range Rover outside, trunk open, and suitcases spilling out. Dad was near snoring on the couch. I pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen, which, surrounding a matching tiled floor, countertops and painted cabinets, was a hazy cloud of puce.
“I’m just going out.”
“What do you mean ‘out’? You don’t know a soul here!” When it was clear I wasn’t going to respond, Mom went on. “Make sure you’re back by five, we need to get you cleaned up for the barbecue.”
“The
what
?” I swirled around abruptly.
Mom rolled her eyes and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Honestly, Cora, do you ever listen? The barbecue the Carltons invited us to. I’ve told you about it a million times. It’s to kick off the season and celebrate the holiday weekend. Everyone’s going to be there!”
“Who are the Carltons? And who’s ‘everyone’?” That
definitely
did
not include me. I was too awkward a person to enjoy introductions and small talk.
“Oh, Linda Carlton is just divine! The realtor gave us her number. A must-know in this neighborhood. And she has a son your age who sounds just
charming
!”
I intended to groan inwardly, but it must have been audible, because Mom’s face darkened.
“Oh, you
will
go, and you will have the time of your life!” It was a demand, as if she could make me feel good or bad at her will. “And you will be an absolute
doll
to this Owen Carlton! He just graduated, too, and he likes to boat and play water polo. And above it all, he has his own sailboat! Oh, how I wished we lived on the coast and you could have a sailboat, Cora.”
“Eh, I’m good.”
“Oh, and this Owen, I think he’s going to an Ivy—”
Nope. I was not going to talk about that. Not now. “I’m going out,” I said decisively.
I headed for the back door, which was, miraculously, an off-white color. Oh, wonderful haven to my eyes! I grabbed the brass handle—
“Unlike that Josh Watson.”
My heart stopped. I turned slowly around.
“Where’s he going? Stanford?” She wrinkled her nose as if Stanford were a pile of rubbish and not a fantastic university.
He’s not going to Stanford
, I thought miserably. Those shiny blue eyes were going to
Western
.
“This Owen—”
“Are you
seriously
bringing this up right now? Mom—”
“Actually, on second thought, I’m fairly sure the Watsons hold some sway at Stanford. Maybe we could email them—”
“
What?
No!”
It was quickly becoming clear to me. She saw this summer away as some kind of fix-all. Some kind of cure for every problem she’d ever had. Especially concerning me. This summer was supposed to fix
me
.
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said, becoming interested in the arrangement of the kitchen table and chairs. “Oh, and do be careful,” she added. “Linda tells me there’s a sordid crowd that runs around here, too. Petty robberies and things of that sort. Not ideal for a summer away, but … And don’t forget we need to go up to the pool and sign up for swimming lessons!”
My stomach dropped to the pink tiled floor and my will to fight left me. She did, indeed, have a whole plan to fix me. I pushed open the back door and dashed through before letting it slam on whatever afterthought was currently leaving my mother’s mouth.
A wide set of stairs led from the back porch across the backyard. Low and long, they ended in a curving flourish at the public boardwalk that ran horizontal along the beach. I wandered aimlessly down the boardwalk and it wasn’t long before I lost sight of the Pink Atrocity.
Out of sight, out of mind
, I sighed.
I found myself in the middle of a great expanse of tiny red wooden cabins with a few mismatched houses interspersed. I was decidedly outside my comfort zone, but I couldn’t figure out how to get back to the row of old houses in the distance.
It’s like a frickin’ standardized test
, I thought glumly. I’d always done badly on the maps portion.
At one particular fork in the boardwalk, I chose left at random—hoping it would lead to the pink monstrosity in the distance.
I realized my mistake too late. The boardwalk snaked toward the biggest of the dodgy red cabins, a two-story deal with chipping paint and the word “office” painted in a window. A sign swung in the breeze above the door. It said “O’Brien Resort” and creaked like a verbal warning of imminent danger. I wondered vaguely if there was a seaside motel in the
Saw
movies …